a fabulous exception
okay, so displacement boats are BORING...they are however wondrous when one finds oneself in an ocean with 'hurricane surprise' for breakfast.
Whitehaven, a 50 footer headed from the Med to Sydney. Leg one...to the Canaries.
A key function of a mast, apart from holding the boat the right way up is that I can go sit at the top of it (or in this case the second set of spreaders). And when the boat has magic button winches nobody minds winching me up!
Good God, an interior you could swing a cat in. I didn't know they made such things ;)
We were having a good trip - sunny, autohelm, a chilled out 9kts down the north african coast (were those fishing boats or pirates? one moonlighting as t'other was the general concensus...steered clear). We were even bored enough to get the spanners out and tighten things (important things, the rudder for example).
Then the sky went a funny colour and the waves got bigger. We went in search of weather forecasts in any language we could vaguely understand and asked our Sydney based routers to find out what was up. We even hailed a passing cargo ship. I've never heard such a fabulous French accent 'it is a hurricane, go south, go south'.
We met Vince.
Oddly enough we stopped cooking 2 course dinners and reverted to packets of biscuits and cup-a-soup in between tying down everything in sight and putting away anything in the cabin that could go flying.
Drogue was prepped, sat phone was on and oilies were wet.
There are lots of photos from this trip as a whole but only this handful for the 48 busy hours.
Luckily we were far enough from the eye to be able to get out of the dangerous semi-circle. Our track fro this trip is anything but a straight line! Still, Vince carried on for the coast of Spain where he ran out of energy and we made it to the Canaries only a day later than planned. There are photos of the first night in port...they are however a bit blurred.
Whitehaven, a 50 footer headed from the Med to Sydney. Leg one...to the Canaries.
A key function of a mast, apart from holding the boat the right way up is that I can go sit at the top of it (or in this case the second set of spreaders). And when the boat has magic button winches nobody minds winching me up!
Good God, an interior you could swing a cat in. I didn't know they made such things ;)
We were having a good trip - sunny, autohelm, a chilled out 9kts down the north african coast (were those fishing boats or pirates? one moonlighting as t'other was the general concensus...steered clear). We were even bored enough to get the spanners out and tighten things (important things, the rudder for example).
Then the sky went a funny colour and the waves got bigger. We went in search of weather forecasts in any language we could vaguely understand and asked our Sydney based routers to find out what was up. We even hailed a passing cargo ship. I've never heard such a fabulous French accent 'it is a hurricane, go south, go south'.
We met Vince.
Oddly enough we stopped cooking 2 course dinners and reverted to packets of biscuits and cup-a-soup in between tying down everything in sight and putting away anything in the cabin that could go flying.
Drogue was prepped, sat phone was on and oilies were wet.
There are lots of photos from this trip as a whole but only this handful for the 48 busy hours.
Luckily we were far enough from the eye to be able to get out of the dangerous semi-circle. Our track fro this trip is anything but a straight line! Still, Vince carried on for the coast of Spain where he ran out of energy and we made it to the Canaries only a day later than planned. There are photos of the first night in port...they are however a bit blurred.
posted by Brambles @ 1:15 PM
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